not a flame here. fearing being outed because i've been on this site long enough that i've made posts that make obvious which school i go to.

long story short, i just took a law school exam, for my favorite class. i would say except for one other person, i probably study more than anyone else (at least that i know of) in my school. (maybe?) thanks to TLS, i knew from the gate not to waste time with briefing, etc. so that i spent all of my time learning the BLL, trying to learn and understand nuances, and the like. i began looking at (but not taking) old exams for this class from week 3, and read 4 reputable (and very good) supplements cover to cover.

Well, here's the jist of it. In the practice exams I've taken, I generally would be able to write ~7500 words in strictly timed conditions for the same amount of time during which I took the test today, and today I only wrote ~5500 words. I finished (as far as I know), but I feel as if I wrote far, far too few words. From my reading top law schools, I feel like you can't get a top score unless you write significantly more than that. However, not only do I not feel like I really could have written much more, I also took at least 10 minutes making sure my exam was well organized, by adding headings, bolding/ italicizing points I wanted to make sure the professor notices, and then double-checking my multiple choice at the very end.

I don't feel like there is one single thing more I could have done for this exam; further, I barely consulted my outline, since I had memorized it. (I did consult my checklist, to make sure I had covered every possible issue. I feel like I did, and even threw in a few "so and so could make this argument, but it would be a weak argument and this is why" sort of points for each set of parties we had to discuss.)

So, excuse how long this was, but I'm really upset. Is it completely impossible to get a good grade, considering how few words I wrote? Has anyone had an experience where they didn't type a novel and still did well? Thanks for any advice/ anecdotes you may be able to provide me with.

ETA: the only reason I'm asking is because all of the "i did well in law school" threads on this board talk about how they wrote 10,000 words+ on exams, and I don't even know how that is possible.

Last edited by lawschool1234567 on Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

thank you. just took my first law school exam and i'm feeling really unsure of myself, since i don't have any law school friends outside of my school and it is really not appropriate to talk to them about exams, since we're all feeling equally insecure.

johansantana21 wrote:Also the only exam I can think of at my school which would require more than 10k works is for torts and that's cuz torts is just a filled with issues.

My problem is that this being my first ever law school exam, I don't have any sort of "standard" to set myself up against except for what I read here, and doing simple math 10,000- 5,500 = wow it sounds like i fucked something up

Seminole_305 wrote:That is crazy. I thought I was writing to much (2500-3000) for the entire exam.

Seminole_305 wrote:That is crazy. I thought I was writing to much (2500-3000) for the entire exam.

Not trying to scare you but writing an exam of that length, for a typical law school exam, is very dangerous.I know from experience. There are professors who give exams where you can get a good grade with that length, but they are not the norm. This is particularly true with the customary 1L race horse issue spotter exam where an everything but the ktichen sink approach generally receives the highest grade. When you write an exam of that length you distinguish yourself from your peers, and not in a good way. Good luck with exams.

Seminole_305 wrote:That is crazy. I thought I was writing to much (2500-3000) for the entire exam.

Seminole_305 wrote:That is crazy. I thought I was writing to much (2500-3000) for the entire exam.

Not trying to scare you but writing an exam of that length, for a typical law school exam, is very dangerous.I know from experience. There are professors who give exams where you can get a good grade with that length, but they are not the norm. This is particularly true with the customary 1L race horse issue spotter exam where an everything but the ktichen sink approach generally receives the highest grade. When you write an exam of that length you distinguish yourself from your peers, and not in a good way. Good luck with exams.

Well we haven't had a horse race exam and for the most part the professor says deal only with the call of the question. I have asked classmates how much they wrote and most said they didn't give get close to 1500.

Unless you meant I wrote to much... Not sure if I understand (studying and loafing so I can't really focus)

Last edited by Seminole_305 on Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lawschool1234567 wrote:not a flame here. fearing being outed because i've been on this site long enough that i've made posts that make obvious which school i go to.

long story short, i just took a law school exam, for my favorite class. i would say except for one other person, i probably study more than anyone else (at least that i know of) in my school. (maybe?) thanks to TLS, i knew from the gate not to waste time with briefing, etc. so that i spent all of my time learning the BLL, trying to learn and understand nuances, and the like. i began looking at (but not taking) old exams for this class from week 3, and read 4 reputable (and very good) supplements cover to cover.

Sorry, bro.

Being well prepared is necessary, but not sufficient, for good grades.

I wrote a lot 1L year on all of my exams. I found that on a typical 1L issue spotter, there were more issues than anyone could legitimately cover in the allotted time. As a result, there were two types of high-volume typers: the ones who just regurgitated their outlines and the ones who simply got to more issues than other people. The first group did not do well, the second group did well.

tl;dr: Type a lot, but make sure you're addressing issues present in the facts and not just chasing your own outline.

Seminole_305 wrote:That is crazy. I thought I was writing to much (2500-3000) for the entire exam.

Seminole_305 wrote:That is crazy. I thought I was writing to much (2500-3000) for the entire exam.

Not trying to scare you but writing an exam of that length, for a typical law school exam, is very dangerous.I know from experience. There are professors who give exams where you can get a good grade with that length, but they are not the norm. This is particularly true with the customary 1L race horse issue spotter exam where an everything but the ktichen sink approach generally receives the highest grade. When you write an exam of that length you distinguish yourself from your peers, and not in a good way. Good luck with exams.